In recent years, electronic information devices having touch sensors such as touch panels, touch switches and the like as members for detecting a contact by an operator have been popularly used for mobile terminals such as mobile phones. Such electronic information devices having the touch sensors have been widely employed by, besides the mobile terminals, information equipments such as calculators, ticket vending machines, home electric appliances such as microwaves, TV sets, lighting equipments, industrial equipments (FA equipments) and the like.
There are known a variety of types of those touch sensors, such as a resistive film type, a capacitive type, an optical type and the like. The touch sensor of any of these types detects a contact by an operator's finger, a stylus pen and the like. Generally, the electronic information device having the touch sensor displays an image of an operation key or a button (hereinafter, referred to as an “object”) in a display panel displayed on a display unit disposed on a rear face of the touch sensor. When the operator contacts the object displayed in the display panel, the touch sensor detects the contact at a position corresponding to the object.
Such an electronic information device having the touch panel, according to application software (hereinafter, referred to simply as “application”) being used, may configure various user interfaces by displaying the objects. The electronic information device having the touch sensor, therefore, may configure various user interfaces with great flexibility. Also, offering simple operations and good usability for the operator, the electronic information device having the touch panel has been rapidly spread.
Incidentally, recent electronic information devices often have a function (or a part of the function) approximately the same as that of operating system (OS) incorporated into a personal computer (PC). Accordingly, when such an electronic information device is employed as the user interface of a small terminal such as the mobile phone used by the operator for inputting a character string and the like, the electronic information device operates based on an operation approximately the same as that of the personal computer (PC).
In using the small mobile terminal such as the mobile phone, for example, although a different input method is employed due to the fewer number of keys and buttons that may be arranged on a body of the small mobile terminal, the operator may move a cursor by using direction keys and press each of the keys to display a character at a predetermined position, or delete the character by using a delete key. That is, the operator who understands basic operations of the OS of the PC may often intuitively figure out basic operations of the electronic information device as well.
Also, there is an input mode of the electronic information device that performs auto repeat in response to holding down of the key. For example, when the electronic information device executes an auto repeat function, a first character is immediately displayed when the operator presses down a predetermined character key. Then, when the operator keeps pressing the same key, the same character is continuously displayed one after another. Such an “auto repeat” is also referred to as key repeat and represents a function to continuously input a plurality of the same characters, instead of a single character, when the same key is continuously pressed down for a predetermined period or longer. It is to be noted that the “holding down” is an operation to maintain pressing the same key down for the predetermined period or longer.
As a technology associated with the auto repeat, there is suggested a method that notifies the operator of progress of processing based on an operation by the operator, by means of other than a visual notification (for example, see Patent Document 1 listed below). A computer disclosed in Patent Document 1 may notify the operator that the auto repeat function is activated based on holding down of a key of a keyboard by means of a display or sound. Adoption of such a technique enables the operator, even when the display of the display unit (display screen) may not be visually observed, to know progress of processing after the operation by the operator by means of the sound.